Lack of consensus on constitutive fundamentals: roots of the Sudanese civil war and prospects for settlement

In: African and Asian studies: AAS, Band 4, Heft 1-2, S. 51-82

Abstract

This article examines the Sudanese civil war, focusing on its causes, the dynamics of peace negotiations, and the prospects for a final settlement. Extant literature has tended to explain the Sudanese civil war in terms of the rational instrumentalism of the key players on either side of the conflict; the primordialism of ethnic and religious identity; internal colonialism and the dialectics of cultural pluralism; as well as in terms of center-periphery dynamics, with Moslem Arabs of North-central Sudan constituting the center, pitted against the periphery represented by Africans of the Southern Sudan, Nuba Mountains, Southern Blue Nile, and Darfur. This article argues, on the contrary, that despite the apparently overarching cultural and socioeconomic dimensions, the Sudanese conflict is essentially a political one whose causes are rooted in lack of a broad based consensus on the constitutive fundamentals of the Sudanese State. (...) The article analyzes the checkered history of the elusive search for a negotiated settlement. It posits that the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed in Nairobi in January 2005, marks the beginning of the end of the conflict, assuming its speedy implementation, because of the boldness with which it addressed the key issues in contention. (AAS/DÜI)